Euthanasia danger

Euthanasia danger

Friday 19 January 2007 19.02 EST
First published on Friday 19 January 2007 19.02 EST

Peter Singer (Comment, January 17) manages to conflate a patient's reasonable refusal of treatment deemed to be burdensome with a patient's suicidal claim to be assisted (by act or omission) in ending his or her life. Singer claims that in the latter case the patient is merely seeking to escape the illness which "makes life burdensome". But to refuse treatment with the aim of ending one's life is to commit suicide: to make the ending of one's life the means of achieving one's end of being relieved of a particular condition. People in such a depressed state need palliative care and social support. They do not need to be encouraged in taking a false and negative view of the value of their lives.

Singer approves of the Dutch legal experience, yet Holland has seen a frightening incidence not only of voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide but of non-voluntary and involuntary killing. Official Dutch statistics, survey after survey, confirm this.Anthony McCarthy Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics